Feminism Through New Eyes

I mentioned yesterday I've been reading Educated by Tara Westover. She grew without going to school nor having much home schooling. A few years after entering her first classroom at age 17 she received a Ph. D. from Cambridge University in England. Her book has sold six million copies. She was on a live pod cast today at a small university and continues to be an influential speaker and author. 

One part of her story was going to Cambridge for a summer while an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. She was getting acquainted with some other students who were also taking a course in women's history when she first her the words, "first wave and second wave."

Hearing terms others around her knew well but she was hearing for the first time was not new to Westover. She had learned not to stop the conversation and ask, "What is that?" She did that in her first class at BYU when she the professor referred in passing to the Holocaust. Westover raised her had to ask what that word referred to. The professor paused and went on. Another student was angry toward her thinking she was a "Holocaust denier."

Westover hurried home to look up "first and second wave" of feminism. She learned John Stuart Mill was part of the first wave and wrote in the early 1800's we don't know the potential of women. He and others advocated women's right to vote. Their advocacy was based on the proposition women would be better mothers and wives if they participated in political life.

The second wave involved among others Betty Friedan. In 1963 she published The Feminine Mystic. It sold a million copies and has been used in classes about women's rights ever since. Her thesis was that women are equal to men and society needs to adjust its thinking accordingly. Friedan was an outspoken advocate of abortion rights.

A significant part of Christianity has fought both the first and second wave of feminism. They are still fighting against women's rights. The needle has been moving steadily toward equal rights ever since Mill. 

Westover was taught as a child women are inferior and needed to stay in the kitchen. Now she travels the world. To believe anti abortion activists can move the needle backwards seems far fetched. 

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